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mickume

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Arcade’s other hand massaged my shoulder and back but didn’t linger overly long on its way to my rear.  Which was good; with him mostly naked on top of me, I didn’t need more than physical contact to get hard.  I’d wanted this to begin with and now I needed it.  I was probably stronger than him, but I was also a bit smaller and with my muscles already tense to hold my head up so I could kiss him, I’d shifted my center of gravity so far towards my shoulders that it probably made it much easier for him to lift my hips one handed.  I’d had sex too many different ways to have a guess as to what he planned before he did that.  I’d half expected him to still be figuring that out himself with how hesitant he was being.  The hand on my side lunged off the bed and grabbed the jar of lube I’d purposefully left on top of my bag.  Nobody else had seen it before, so they weren’t likely to open or steal my mysterious unlabeled jar; only Arcade would recognize it.  I’d left it there to tempt him three days ago when we got back and I’d been meaning to put it away today.  I guess it was lucky that I hadn’t.  

Perhaps surprisingly, Arcade was one of the two tallest men I’d ever slept with so I didn’t fully expect it when he thrust into me without needing to break the kiss or make me lean too far forward.  I could keep my back almost straight and he could still reach, and it wasn’t uncomfortable for me either— quite a feat, considering that usually having sex in this position left me practically a pretzel.  I normally rested my knees against my partner’s shoulders to give me a better grip, but with Arcade, my knees could only reach his seventh rib.  

After Lucia, I knew I probably had scarring or some form of remaining damage even if the stimpaks Arcade had given me and the ones I’d used on myself had taken care of most of it.  I’d had many similar injuries but none had been that bad before; I couldn’t even remember half of what had happened that night or for a few nights afterward.  I’d been worried about what might happen now, with Arcade and if he’d tried this at Helios, I would have stopped him, but everything went fine.  I don’t know if that’s because I had healed more than I’d expected or because he was so gentle.  It was like he thought he might hurt me and that might have been the reason; I couldn’t remember if I’d told him what happened.  I don’t think that I had, but maybe I’d admitted it in some delirious rambling.  If I had, either he hadn’t believed me or he didn’t know the real source of that abuse.  If he knew it was Lucia, he wouldn’t be alive.  

I’d gotten distracted worrying about old wounds and Lucia; I pressed into the kiss with renewed focus and tapped my heels against his back.  I’d hoped he’d take the hint, but he didn’t.  I broke the kiss to talk to him.  "Come on.  You can be more forceful than that!"  I nipped his ear so his mouth was free to answer.  

He panted an answer into my neck as he started thrusting just a little faster, "Are you sure?"  I understood why he asked; he was worried for the same reason that I was, but I’d probably be fine and he misinterpreted my silence.  "I mean... because a few weeks ago... you were bleeding..."  

"Yeah."  I looked away and reasoned with myself.  It had been weeks and a lot of stimpaks, I was fine.  Whatever had happened, I was fine now.  And this was Arcade, not Lucia.  "Arcade, I’m fine.  You don’t need to hold back."  I kissed him again.  He only hesitated for a moment before he kissed me back.  He really did want this as much as I did; he’d been going so slow, but now he started in earnest.  

Even when he stopped being so afraid of hurting me— emotionally or physically— I still knew he was thinking about me.  It wasn’t like with Lucia, or most of my clients, where they lost sight of the fact that I was a person, or just never cared about that to begin with; it was different. This was... a little alarming.  I still wanted him, and I certainly wasn’t about to stop him, but it made me worry.  He seemed so... Old World; by now I knew he probably expected me to be serious about this.  The problem was, I wasn’t sure I could be.  At the very least, he’d probably get upset if I slept with Lucia, and if Lucia wanted that, I probably wouldn’t have a choice.  Besides, I’d always been one to flee from responsibility and commitment as if they were rabid deathclaws. 

Somewhere around three in the morning, we both lay panting and exhausted on the bed.  I rolled off of him and slid a finger under his collar to make sure his pulse didn’t get too erratic.  By this point, we were both covered in a mix of semen and lube; it hadn’t occurred to me until now, but it was lucky that nobody had returned to the suite during this time.  And evidently, Cass was still unconscious, considering she hadn’t come in asking to join us.  

Max seemed perfectly content and that was so rare that I couldn’t resist kissing him.  The kiss must have broken that ephemeral moment, because when I drew back, he frowned thoughtfully and sighed.  He shifted his wrists in the handcuffs, adjusting to rest his arms on the pillow more comfortably.  He looked serious and I braced myself for any number of awful post-coital revelations.  Mostly, I expected him to say that he didn’t want a relationship or maybe that he preferred women, so I wasn’t prepared for what he actually planned to admit.  

He had the same tone I’d used the few times I’d foolishly admitted my Enclave ties to my lovers, so it almost made me laugh when he began, "I know you were born in the Enclave."  

"Yeah?  I figured we both made that clear enough to each other, even without stating it explicitly."

Max grimaced.  "Yes.  I’m not positive you understood my side of things through all the —admittedly necessary— obfuscations.  I want to state it directly just to be sure we’re on the same page."

"...Okay."  He was just being paranoid, right?  I don’t think there was any way I could have failed to understand that we both had roughly the same past.  

Max steeled himself.  "Look... we both grew up running and hiding from the NCR, we both lost a lot of people thanks to the NCR.  We were both born into technologically advanced, isolated communities, and both of them made us enemies of the NCR by birth.  And we both rejected these communities— at least for the most part— and we certainly don’t agree with either of their ideals, but I was never Enclave."

I stared at him.  Really, it should have been obvious what he was saying at that point, but I didn’t want to believe it.  There was only one other organization he could be talking about, so I shouldn’t have felt so shocked and hurt when he quietly admitted, "I was born into the Brotherhood of Steel.  I left when I was thirteen."  I was completely blindsided by his additional revelation, "I’m Gabriel Maxson, one of the last two living descendants of Roger Maxson, founder of the Brotherhood of Steel."  

*        *         *

I knew it would be a difficult truth for him to deal with, but he looked so devastated.  I couldn’t imagine a more crushing truth unless I’d also been helping the Legion.  And I wasn’t.  But I had considered it.  I didn’t hate them like I hated the NCR.  

"I didn’t intend to deceive you," I explained, "I never lied; I realized you probably misunderstood me, but... I wasn’t sure how to tell you.  I didn’t want you to think I’d been part of the Enclave, I just knew... I knew we’d both been through the same things, even if it was for different reasons.  I know what it’s like to wake up even when you’re safe, even when you know you’re as safe as possible, and to lie awake terrified that somehow they’re going to find you."  

He rolled onto his back, somehow managing not to fall off the narrow bed, and rubbed his temples.  "Yes.  I get it.  You never actually lied, I just... I was just really, really stupid about all this."  He stood and frowned at the sheets beneath me.  He must have still been considering what I’d told him, because he wondered, "Gabriel Maxson— is that where the nickname `Max’ came from?"

I nodded.  I clicked my handcuffs against the bed frame and changed the subject, "If you’re planning to clean up, I can help."

Arcade narrowed his eyes.  

There was the obvious problem that I needed a shower after all that and so did he, so leaving me handcuffed to the bed would defeat the purpose of cleaning up at all and besides, it was hardly humane by his standards.  Personally, I’d been chained to a bed for a lot longer than this and in worse conditions, but I appreciated that Arcade let me shower before chaining me to the clean bed and showering and cleaning on his own.  

He’d reacted better than I’d expected but not as well as I’d hoped.  I’d hardly thought that he’d just take it in stride and suggest we have sex again, but I had entertained the idea that he might tell me it was okay, that we’d both rejected the life we’d been born into so it didn’t matter too much.  He hadn’t attacked me— I’d never thought he would— and he hadn’t even gotten visibly angry.  But I could tell he was upset.  He felt like I’d deceived him, even though I hadn’t meant to.  I’d realized that he thought I was also Enclave, but admitting I was really a member of one of the organizations that had destroyed his home— not only that, but the descendant of the man who had founded that group...  I just hadn’t been able to do that.  I’d only reached the point today where I felt I couldn’t lead him on any longer.  I wondered where it left us.  He needed time; I knew it wouldn’t help to ask him where we stood now, however much I wanted to.  

Handcuffed to the bed— and having been awake since around four after I’d passed out from exhaustion last evening— I must have dozed off despite my racing thoughts.  

*       *      *

I’d just finished cleaning up when Lucia returned.  The elevator opened while I was crossing through the hallway in my pajamas with the freshly cleaned sheets.  As much as I wanted to tell her about our breakthrough about stimpaks, I would rather not have to explain why I’d washed the sheets in the first place, but the courier saw me before I could reach the relative safety of the guest bedroom and be out of her immediate sight.  Her eyes glanced across the bundled sheets in my arms to my embarrassed expression.  "...Hi, Lucia..."

My heart sank as I watched her brows knit and her smile falter.  I knew what was coming before she spoke.  "You and Max...?"

Somehow I doubted she’d appreciate if I answered with "obviously," so I sought a tactful wording and found none.  I hadn’t known she and Max were together, but I’d strongly suspected it.  I was pretty sure I’d asked him several times before, but he’d always avoided the question.  Today, with his clearly murderous intentions, I’d figured they must have ended it, but I’d never asked.  Max, Brotherhood heritage aside, had clearly spent enough time as a prostitute to skew his idea of a healthy relationship; he might not have even realized Lucia cared if he slept with other people.  Lucia, for her part, was so naive that she probably hadn’t thought to make that clear.  I was the only one who knew both of them well enough to have seen this problem coming and had any chance of stopping it.  I guess it was really my fault that left the courier heartbroken.  "...Sorry, I..."  There wasn’t anything to say.  Between her... and Max...  I should have realized.

Lucia’s breath caught in a sob.  "Arcade?!  I-I trusted you!  I can’t believe you’d just—!"  She sobbed again and I set the sheets down and attempted to hug her, but she shoved me away.  Lucia glared at me.  "I thought it was just rumors with you and Max, why the hell would you—?!"  She paced the narrow hallway and huffed.  She was pissed off, understandably, but that was just a thin veil over how hurt she felt; every breath came out like a sob and she had tears streaming down her face however angrily she shouted.  I could handle rage, I’m pretty sure I could have stayed composed if General Oliver himself was screaming threats at me, but watching Lucia breaking down like this just left me cold.  Nothing I could say would help and I had no idea how I’d sort this out in the future.  Max had me wrapped around his finger and he knew it; he knew exactly how to play me if he wanted to.  I didn’t trust that I could resist him even after seeing Lucia like this.  

I wasn’t surprised when she slapped me.  With her build and size, it barely hurt and I probably deserved worse.  "I thought you were better than this!"  She stormed into her room and slammed the door.  I heard it lock behind her.  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I could hear her crying inside.  I ran a hand through my disheveled, damp hair and sighed.  This was a mess.  Whatever Max thought of her, it was just his grudge against the NCR distorting his perceptions.  Heck, given that he’d used to deal in information, she was working for NCR higher-ups, and she kept him here in relative safety, I wondered if he might be manipulating her.  He seemed genuine in his attraction to me, although that was probably wishful thinking.  Even if he wasn’t, he did sincerely despise her.  Their relationship had to be a ruse on his part.  He’d been using her.  Max was smart, smarter than I was at the very least; he must have realized that Lucia would expect what they had to be exclusive and to mean something more than it did to him.  In which case, he’d either meant for her to catch us and find out, or he’d been honest with me and this was a relationship he cared about while his thing with Lucia was just to control her.  I’d seen enough of Max’s methods that I’d be willing to bet it was the former.  

I stormed into the bedroom ready to give Max a piece of my mind... and found him fast asleep.  The handcuffs forced him to sleep with his arms curled in front of him and his hands on the pillow.  In the cold room, he’d curled into what was almost the fetal position.  Cleaned up and dressed in a set of pajamas I hadn’t known he owned, he looked so peaceful.  It brought to mind everything he’d been through that for once he’d taken off his collar and bracers.  He kept his wrists pressed together even while he slept, but I could still see the edges of a few horizontal scars.  The vertical ones were hidden.  Even if he was a manipulative bastard, he’d endured more than enough to skew his sense of morality.  

Max had been awake for at least twenty hours.  I didn’t know when he’d woken up, but after the past few days and with his rate of activity, he needed sleep.  He usually slept more restlessly so seeing him lying almost perfectly still, curled up with a blanket that had slid off the bed where he probably couldn’t reach it, I decided to let him sleep.  I walked over and draped the blanket back over him, a little surprised when he didn’t stir.  He wasn’t faking; his breathing suggested a very deep sleep so I probably couldn’t have awakened him even if I’d wanted to.  He wasn’t lying about having been through a lot of the same things that I had.  I knew that just from the time I’d spent with him; people who’d spent so much of their lives hiding didn’t usually sleep well.  I’d seen him jolt awake and I’d seen him lying sleepless and tense too often to believe that he might have faked that to fool me.  He wouldn’t have told me he was a Maxson if he hadn’t been sincere about that much.  

Not for the first time, I found myself at a loss.  I couldn’t decide what to do about Max or if I was mad at him or just disappointed and I couldn’t talk to him right now anyway.  The courier was locked in her room and Max was handcuffed to a steel-frame bed; even if he woke up, she was safe.  Physically, at least.  I checked on Cass in the kitchen to make sure she was still breathing, remade the other bed, changed into my usual clothes, and left the suite.  I barely walked for an hour before my aching feet reminded me of the trip to Helios and I remembered how tired I was just from today.  I needed to clear my head, but hopefully sleep would do that just as well as a walk.  Even if I would be going to bed only a few feet away from Max.  

*       *       *

In a long and sordid history of mistakes, I think one of the worst had to be sleeping handcuffed in the suite of a known enemy.  I don’t know when I woke up the first time and I have no memory of anything after I fell asleep that night until I came to, lying sweaty and exhausted on Lucia’s bed wearing only my bracers and collar.  I’d had sex at least once, I knew that much even if I couldn’t remember it.  I could feel my heart twitching about in my chest like a squirrel on jet, but it didn’t hurt.  Nothing hurt at all right now.  Staring at the ceiling in front of me, I found myself absolutely content to marvel at the subtle gradient of amber light over plaster.  I knew this feeling.  I was stoned.  

My right hand felt wrong somehow, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to realize why.  I wasn’t alone.  There was someone lying on the bed beside me.  I felt warm fingers under my wrist where the laces knotted to hold my bracer in place.  They didn’t move when I stretched my arm.  It seemed like a woman’s hand, and I knew I’d had sex with a woman, so I guessed Cass.  She wasn’t moving and hadn’t gotten on top of me again, so she must be asleep.  I tried to sit up but my back refused to lift me.  My body remained stubbornly weak when I tried to just prop myself up on my elbows.  I settled for turning my head.  Cass lay sprawled on the bed beside me.  With blankets and pillows rumpled around us, I couldn’t see her clearly, but wild red hair and a lingering odor of whiskey told me it must be her.  I would have gone back to sleep, I wanted to go back to sleep.  It felt like there was a vice around my chest; I couldn’t breathe even though I could feel the air filling my lungs the same as always.  I wasn’t coherent enough to realize what that meant.  

Moving my head alerted my captor.  

"Fuck," Lucia giggled, "you’re still alive?  I thought for sure that would have killed you even if the rest didn’t."  She certainly wasn’t perturbed by this fact.  If I’d been lucid, that would have terrified me.  

"What?" I mumbled.  I couldn’t think clearly enough to understand why my heart beat to the rhythm of a gunfight.  "The rest of what?"  I tried again to sit up and failed, so I settled for rolling onto my side to face her voice.  I found Lucia standing much closer than I’d expected.  She wore the long t-shirt she slept in, suggesting we might have had a threesome, although even as drugged as I was, I didn’t trust her enough to believe that.  She grabbed my hand and held my fingers in place to keep the palm exposed.  I couldn’t imagine why and I didn’t dwell on it at the time.  

"Do you even realize you’re high?"  She had this look of sadistic fascination.  The memory of that gaze stuck with me for a long time and it ended up haunting my nightmares once the drugs wore off.  

"Yeah," I admitted, gasping for air through my nose.  I was still panting because I still felt like I was suffocating.  She couldn’t have poisoned the air, could she?  No.  She’d be dying as well.  What the hell was going on with my body?  I found myself suddenly distracted.  "I smell bacon."

Lucia giggled hysterically.  "Bacon?"  She laughed so hard that I don’t think she could breathe either and I lay there quietly thinking about breakfast until she calmed down.  I could breathe a bit easier by the time that happened, so in my dazed state, I somehow thought I must have been laughing as well.  Maybe I was, I’m not sure.  When she could speak, Lucia remarked, "Well of course you smell bacon."  Without explaining why that was, she told me, "I used up the last of that Med-X on you.  I thought I’d be able to make you overdose, but you’ve made things so much more fun.  How much of that shit were you taking before Arcade got you clean, six syringes a day?  You didn’t even pass out until after that!  You didn’t pass out you’d come and I had to give you some of the other chems I’ve saved up to even get you interested in sex!"  She laughed again and I wondered if I’d slept with her or both of them.  Lucia would have gotten what she wanted regardless, at least Cass might have enjoyed herself last night.  Or tonight.  Or this morning.  I couldn’t really tell.  

I couldn’t do the math of how much she’d given me and I couldn’t guess what else she’d dosed me with.  Lucia had been hunting Fiends for the NCR; she’d have access to crap I didn’t even make.  At the time, this was a hopeful thought.  I was happy.  Whatever she’d given me, it was good.  I wanted more.  I was always going to want more.  

Lucia was laughing again and I didn’t care.  I was too out of my head to care what she did to me right now or even to notice and appreciate that my heart had gone back to a more normal beat; I closed my eyes and nearly fell asleep.  

That was when Lucia let go of my hand and started screaming.  

*       *       *

Traveling with Lucia, I’d been awakened more than once by the girl screaming my name because we were under attack, but I didn’t expect the same rude awakening in the suite of the Lucky 38.  Still, I heard panic in her tone and that convinced me to run rather than lie in bed for a moment begrudging my lack of sleep.  With my background, attack remained my first thought when I’d been woken up by a scream.  Following that, I expected a bad cut or a drunken fall; worst case scenario was some serious but relatively random medical emergency like a heart attack or appendicitis- between Cass and Max the former was significantly more likely than usual.  It was possible, but even with Lucia’s scream I anticipated nothing worse than a sprained ankle.  I still sprinted towards the yell.  

Maybe it was due to my haste or just because I was still half-asleep, but it came as a surprise when I found Max sprawled on Lucia’s bed.  I shouldn’t have been shocked by that or by the fact that he was naked, but I still felt betrayed, especially once I noticed the gleam of moisture on his penis more so than the sweat that covered the rest of him, confirming that he hadn’t just decided to strip.  I’d stopped in the doorway, staring at Max; it took me a few seconds to hear Lucia as she babbled and sobbed.  

Lucia was dressed in a long, loose t-shirt and probably nothing else, but I didn’t look too closely.  Sprawled on the bed beside Max, Cass wore even less than he did.  He could have had sex with either of them.  Or both.  I barely glanced at her before looking back at Max, who wasn’t moving.  

Lucia held Max’s wrist while she cried.  I still hadn’t heard a word she was saying, but I saw that and I feared she might be checking for a pulse.  Maybe he’d passed out.  Maybe he’d had a heart attack.  I grabbed his other arm to check the same and snarled curses at the laces on his bracer as I tugged it off.  Max jerked his arm out of my grip and mumbled something unintelligible as I grabbed it again.  It was the first sign of life I’d seen from him yet and I sighed.  "Thank god!  You’re alive."  He didn’t seem to hear me and as I spoke, his eyelids fluttered shut.  Checking his pulse, I found out why.  His pulse was so slow and erratic I could hardly believe he was conscious.  He probably wasn’t conscious now.  

"Arcade!" Lucia shrieked, finally shifting my focus away from Max.  She held his right hand palm up and shook it to draw my attention to the exposed copper wire in the center.  Lucia raised her other hand to show the blob of pink polymer she held, the same material Max used as an insulator to keep his implant from accidentally electrocuting someone.  Lucia nodded towards Cass, but I examined Max first.  What I’d mistaken for a flush due to what he’d been doing turned out to be sub-dermal bruising; the device itself had probably shorted out when the current traveled back through his body.  Normally, an electrical shock like this would have traveled a slightly different path than what I was seeing, so Max must have modified his body even further so the current would avoid more vital places.  Even so, it had probably caused the relatively mild arrhythmia occurring right now and that might get worse in the next few minutes.  If his heart rate didn’t return to normal soon, he might even die, but he’d survived the initial shock, so his odds weren’t awful.  I could see bruises where the current had ruptured blood vessels and even a few small veins, but whatever he’d implanted aside from the device itself had limited the damage.  Ironically, I hadn’t noticed what had happened at first because his precautions obscured the usual signs.  I double checked the zap implant to make sure it had stopped working before running my hands over Max to check for internal injuries.  Aside from his heart and some bruising, he was fine.  

Lucia shook my arm.  "Arcade!"  I didn’t notice at the time that she no longer sounded grief-stricken, only annoyed.  She gestured helplessly towards Cass and I turned to examine the caravaner.  I could feel the heat radiating from her skin before I even touched her.  Her body was covered in the branching crimson of ruptured blood vessels and her forearm had a seared and bloody black hole where the wire had made contact.  I’d already seen the aftermath of one time Max has used the weapon, but this was different.  He’d barely touched the thug and the jolt had probably forced them apart, but in this case either the current had been much stronger or the wire had stayed live and in contact with Cass’ arm for at least a minute.  It was incredible that she hadn’t caught fire.  Max had probably passed out as soon as the current traveled back into his body through the contact with Cass’s skin and Cass may well have lost consciousness for the same reason.  For whatever reason, the circuit hadn’t fried the device immediately, which was odd but maybe Max had built it to withstand a short at least for a little while.  That might not even have changed things.  Cass was dead.  

Lucia knew that when I just sat back and stared at the body, at a loss.  Cass had died on contact— any voltage high enough to leave this kind of burn (because I suspected that Max would have modified the voltage rather than built the device to deliver sustained electrical shocks, considering it was implanted inside of him) would have killed her instantly.  The burn itself reached the bone and severed an artery, so she would have bled out through that if her heart had still been pumping.  Max had only survived because he’d prepared to be accidentally shocked by the implant.  I grabbed his wrist again and checked his pulse.  It had become more regular, though it was still slow.  He might have fallen asleep.  I don’t know if I checked to remind myself that he was still alive or that he’d nearly died; I was still furious with him.  He lay here helpless, but even if it was only an accident, his stupid implant had killed someone.  Cass wasn’t the most innocent woman, but she’d been a good person.  She’d still been drunk, I could smell the whiskey and it wouldn’t have cleared out of her system since last night.  Maybe if she’d been sober this wouldn’t have happened.  Actually, how had this happened?  I could guess, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted to find out what Max got up to while I slept, but I had to know if this had been caused by Cass’s drunken antics or if the blame really lay with Max.  

Lucia sat beside me on the bed, staring at Cass, either too shocked or too appalled to cry.  

"What happened?"

She stared at me blankly for a moment before quietly explaining, "He..."  She studied the wire that sprouted from Max’s palm like some awful sapling.  I took the polymer from her hand and carefully covered it back up, making sure it wouldn’t touch his skin or itself just in case.  "That," Lucia pointed at the putty, "must have fallen off while...  During." 

I sighed.  Again, I didn’t really want to know, but curiosity got the better of me.  "Was it just the two of them or...?"

"The three of us."

My heart sank and Lucia must have realized that she wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed when Max did this sort of thing.  "Arcade, I’m sorry.  We talked and I wasn’t planning to...  You know how he can be."

"Believe me," I sighed, "I know how Max can be."  Max mumbled something, phasing in and out of consciousness and possibly hearing his name.  I checked his pulse and knew he’d be fine.  His heart had gone back to a healthy beat.  I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but knew he wouldn’t be able to hear it right now and I didn’t want to make Lucia feel any guiltier than she already seemed to.  

"What do we do with her?" Lucia murmured.  She hadn’t dealt with dead bodies aside from raiders, legionaries, and other enemies; she had no idea what to do when the person deserved some kind of funeral.  I didn’t have too much experience with that either.  I’d witnessed a lot of deaths, but most of the time no one had had the time or safety to bury them, let alone arrange a funeral.  

I explained what I knew about pre-war funeral rights because I didn’t really know any wasteland traditions— or even if such things existed.  We decided to take Cass outside, off the Strip, and bury her; Lucia claimed she knew a good place.  Getting the body there was the tricky part.  True enough, people were killed on the Strip pretty often, so it wasn’t odd to see folks dragging a body through the streets, but neither of us wanted to make the caravaner as much of a spectacle in death as she had been in life.  We set Cass in the hall on a chair, draped with a dark blanket while Lucia composed herself and cleaned up and I moved Max back to the bed where he usually slept.  

We went out to bury Cass before dawn, when there would be the fewest people out on the streets.  I could carry Cass easily without help— heck, if I wanted to I could carry Max, and Cass had a much slimmer build even though they were roughly the same height.  That fact unnerved me once we had Cass wrapped in a blanket to disguise her body.  It could have just as easily been Max under there.  Even if the thick, rough fabric disguised her shape, she was still warm and my trained hands still felt the unmistakable ridges of her vertebrae and the bone and muscle of her legs as I carried her.  I alternately reminded myself that this was Cass and tried to forget entirely that I was carrying a corpse.  I tried to think of it as some collection of plants or junk that just happened to feel like a body, and then it came to repulse me that I was trying to dehumanize her and then it would bother me that she felt so similar to Max and the train of thought would loop again.  Lucia led me along, all the usual spring completely gone from her steps.  She wore a sunny yellow dress with a series of daisies embroidered on the skirt.  It looked absurdly happy considering the circumstances and left her dour stare and tear-streaked face in stark contrast to her attire.  She led me to a patch of road littered with broken boxes, bottles, and the rotting corpse of a brahmin.  

"This was Cass’ caravan, wasn’t it?"

Lucia nodded.  "I don’t think she drank so much before it was destroyed, but that was before I met her."  

I set Cass on the ground and spread the blanket out so we could see her face.  "At least she knew what happened to her caravan before..."  I cleared my throat and composed myself, "Before the end."  I was trying to say something positive, but there wasn’t much to say.  She’d been a good person, and I wanted to say that except I knew it would sound like I just couldn’t think of anything else.  And that was true— I guess I didn’t really know her that well.  I guess I’d never really know her very well.  I’d only seen Cass when she was drinking, gambling, or asleep; I didn’t exactly know the best of her.  I could say that she’d helped Lucia, but we both knew that wasn’t really true.  Lucia had asked Cass to join her before she really knew the woman, probably because in her eyes trekking across the Mojave was better than sitting in a bar and drinking oneself to death.  She’d stopped traveling with Cass once they knew each other.  Lucia was one of the most fastidious people I knew, and that was really saying something.  In terms of trust and dealing with danger, she was naive, but she always double and triple checked what supplies we brought, what route we were taking, and all the other less combat-related details.  And even when we were fighting, she was always precise.  Cass’s spontaneous, often drunk antics just didn’t mesh with the way Lucia liked to operate.  Hadn’t meshed.  Lucia enjoyed Cass’s company at the suite, I think, but she hadn’t traveled with Cass very often, so I couldn’t say that Cass had really helped bring about any of the change that Lucia was trying to effect.  Lucia just didn’t make that obvious because she was a nice person.  Really, Lucia had helped Cass; the two of them had worked together to figure out who was responsible for the destruction of Cass’ caravan and they’d supposedly killed the entire Crimson Caravan Company and the Van Graffs themselves.  Both women tended to brag and I’d heard that from Cass while she’d been drunk, so I didn’t take it seriously.  

Neither of us could come up with anything else to say, so we got to digging.  I guess it was an upside to living in a desert that the dirt moved relatively easily once we broke the surface.  We were still exhausted once we reached a good depth.  Five feet might have been deep enough, but Lucia convinced me that something might still be able to get to Cass.  After that, the courier sat on the road while I finished digging.  I let her rest partly because she already looked exhausted and because I was both larger and stronger than her; if we’d really wanted to, she could have kept digging and I’d need to lift her out of the hole when we were done.  I planned to dig until I could still climb out on my own, but I wasn’t the most experienced digging holes of any kind, so I misjudged the depth.  

Lucia realized that shortly after my first failed attempt to climb out on my own.  She stood and looked down at me.  "You’re stuck?"

"Yes," I sighed, trying again and failing as the edge of the grave crumbled where I gripped it.  I could get out on my own if I had just a little more leverage.  I held up a hand to the courier.  "Help me out?"  

For a long and unnerving moment, Lucia just stared down blankly.  I couldn’t read any emotion in her eyes and at the time I just thought she’d been distracted by grief.  It was a rather daunting reality to be pulling me out of the grave we’d dug for her friend.  

"...Lucia?  Hello?"

She shook her head, snapping out of a daze and took my hand without a word.  Once I had her help, I climbed out easily.  We lowered Cass’ body into the hole using the blanket and let the ends fall in after her.  They left her face exposed.  Even if her mouth and eyes stayed closed, it remained a\ disturbing sight, but neither of us were willing to climb back in to cover her completely and risk getting stuck on top of her.  Lucia said there were rumors of deathclaws nearby, a fact she hadn’t felt like mentioning until we had Cass in the grave, so I was even less willing to risk getting stuck when I would be facing not only dehydration and extreme heat, but the wasteland’s apex predator which might be very happy to find prey conveniently roasting for it.  We weren’t leaving Cass to be eaten, but we certainly weren’t risking our lives to make her presentable before we covered her with dirt.  

Burying her went smoothly after that.  Lucia picked up a board from a broken crate and stuck it at the head of the grave as a grave marker.  She took out her pocket knife to carve Cass’ name, her full name, which I’d never actually heard before.  I guess I still hadn’t heard it, I’d only read it.  After the name, Lucia stopped and stared at the grave.  "Do you know how old she was?"

I shook my head.  She’d never mentioned that either.  Even Max might not know.  Really, it felt like we barely knew her, and she’d been living with us for months.  Lucia shrugged and carved a series of question marks followed by yesterday’s date.  She didn’t write an epitaph.  

Stepping back from the headboard, Lucia frowned at the grave.  "Isn’t... Is there anything people used to say after...?"

"Quam bene vivas refert, non quam dui," I murmured, "Requiescat in pace."

Lucia frowned.  "Isn’t that the language the Legion speaks?"

I sighed, "Many people have spoken Latin, some of them were actually pleasant."

Lucia nodded and didn’t add her own farewell to Cass in English.  She just turned and started back towards the Strip.  I tried to sort out what I’d be saying to Max once we arrived.  

I had planned to go back to the Lucky 38 once we got back to the city.  Halfway through Freeside, Lucia told me she wanted to stop by the Wrangler for a drink in Cass’s memory.  She invited me along but the last thing I needed right now was hard liquor in a smoky bar where people would inevitably ask why Cass wasn’t with us.  I declined.  I’d made it to the steps of the Lucky 38 before I also realized that I really didn’t want to face Max alone right now, knowing what he’d done.  I just needed some time to cool off and consider this latest tragedy before I locked myself in that windowless suite with the man and probably did something I’d regret.  I headed back to my cot in the Followers camp.  

I’d given the Followers Max’s formulas for stimpaks and various other medicines he concocted (crediting him by his nickname, not that anyone really cared), along with my own notes and observations about the process, which more than earned my keep, but I hadn’t really spent time in the Fort since Lucia had more or less commandeered me.  The guards and even the other doctors looked up when I walked in.  Mostly they just seemed surprised that I had stopped by, even more surprised when I didn’t just drop off a new stack of notes and leave again.  I greeted the few who greeted me, but didn’t want to talk, and it probably showed.  I walked straight to my cot in the back and lay down stifling a sigh.  

I’d barely settled in when Joseph, another Followers doctor, walked into the tent.  Although we’d spoken on several occasions, I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend.  He was usually much too busy with his patients to bother with me, and I was more than fine with that.  

Joseph sat on the chair opposite my cot and gave me that familiar sympathetic look he always gave his patients.  I frowned slightly.  "What?"

"Are you alright?"

"I’m fine." I replied automatically.  

He raised an eyebrow.  "You haven’t been here much lately, you look agitated, and you walked through Freedise with a corpse earlier today.  Is this anything like what happened two years ago?"

I sat up immediately, "No."  I’d been dating a caravanner two years ago.  One trip he’d gone out and just... hadn’t come back.  It happened often enough in the wasteland, it turned out it had been Fiends that time and I wish I could forget what they’d done to him.  It brought up memories of other deaths as well, and I’d been upset for a lot of reasons.  I’m sure I wasn’t very pleasant to be around for a month or so after that had happened and I know I’d snapped at a lot of people without good reason, but this wasn’t like that.  

Okay, maybe that was a lie.  My lover wasn’t dead, but he had killed someone. He was an addict, and generally apathetic towards the troubles around him, and a member of one of the organizations that had hunted my family for years, although granted, I could forgive that last part.  Part of me hoped his apathy was just because he couldn’t emotionally handle how bad things were, but it still bothered me.  This was a man who could change the Mojave just as completely as the courier and yet he simply hadn’t cared to do so.  He’d been sick, and he was still recovering, but with everything he’d been able to do while ill, was he really going to turn around and help Vegas once he fully recovered, or was he just going to fall back into focusing on his own comfort and survival and manipulating others to protect him.  He’d been stoned last night.  For all I knew, he’d just fallen back to drugs even though he was no longer in pain.  But he

an addict.  How much of this was his addiction and how much was just Max being the type of man who would put his own vices ahead of the concerns and even safety of those who cared about him?  This wasn’t last time exactly, but the problem was similar. 

Joseph seemed to guess my thoughts.  "Boyfriend did something?"

I sighed.  "Yes."  When he waited, I added, "It’s not really that interesting."

He seemed to get the message that I didn’t want to talk about it, so he nodded and left.  But gossip spread through the Followers like venereal disease spread through the Strip, so I wasn’t surprised when several people looked in on me over the next hour with advice ranging from "plenty of fish in the sea" to "just go talk to him" to one man openly suggesting himself as an alternative.  I declined, but might have considered the offer if I hadn’t known about the time he’d killed a prostitute in New Reno. 

Max had been getting better.  He needed treatment and he needed to be kept away from temptation.  Maybe I should have done more to help keep him clean.  Had I failed to notice any signs that he might relapse?  He’d been clean.  He’d been making progress.  He’d shared formulas with me, he’d been doing research, he’d been modifying the eyebot, presumably to help the courier.  He’d given Veronica that cryptic message.  Was there something he wanted her to make for him?  If it was drug-related, he could synthesize that on his own, and he was also good with computers from what I had seen, so why ask Veronica?  Did he need supplies?  He’d been actively focused on more productive activities than drugs, and he’d seemed to be successful in his endeavors.  These weren’t the circumstances that usually triggered a relapse.  Had I done something?  I suppose I hadn’t been the most accepting of his connections to the Brotherhood of Steel.  

Was his past really that terrible?  He couldn’t control his lineage any more than I could change mine.  Max hadn’t personally hunted or killed my friends and family.  He had realized that I was Enclave and accepted that without judgement, he seemed to even feel a sort of kinship with me on that basis.  I suppose the Brotherhood and the Enclave were similar, and afterall, the Brotherhood was founded by Enclave defectors.  And the NCR had hunted and hated both groups for decades.  Was it really so terrible that Max had been a member of the Brotherhood of Steel?  

I had caused this, hadn’t I?  I’d reacted too harshly to what he told me, and really it was stupid.  Neither of us could control what group we’d been born into.  Neither of us were really still a part of those groups anyway.  What did it matter if he was born into the Brotherhood?  What did it matter who his grandfather was?  He had left the Brotherhood and now he was trying to make what he could of a life where his body just seemed to want to die.  

Despite the heat of the desert afternoon, a chill ran down my spine.  We’d left Max, a traumatized and concerningly resourceful addict alone in a suite with an arsenal and the materials to make enough chems to kill a deathclaw.  And after killing Cass, he could be justified in thinking that everyone who cared about him had either died or hated him.  

I leapt to my feet.  

I didn’t run, but that was mostly because I didn’t expect that I could sustain a run all the way to the Lucky 38, so I’d probably move faster at a brisk walk.  I didn’t miss the stares I drew when I left the Fort.  Someone followed after me through the doors and I glanced back without slowing down.  It was Emily.  Of all people, she was the last I’d expect, unless she was planning some kind of middle-school taunt.  

  She got right to the point.  "This Max who taught you all these formulas for chems, is this the same Max who used to work at the Gomorra?"

Of course she had seen his show.  I scowled.  "Oh?  You’re speaking to me?  Have you forgotten you’ve been ignoring everything I do for the past five years?" "I’m sorry, I just don’t like answering stupid questions."